Evaluating JBossESB and Messaging questions to the experts

[brown078]

Hello all,
I am working towards bringing our old Biztalk platforms to end of life. We currently use the Biztalk system with out vendors and customers through the RosettaNet standards. There has been alot of turnover and growth and need a better solution. We use jBoss as our intranet development platform now and are slowly integrating into jBPM. I have a few questions being new in the java messaging arena that will help me make the decision to go this route:

Scenario: We have a large volume inbound and outbound Biztalk system currently at end-of-life. A project has come in that we need to make these upgrades as soon as possible. This system uses RosettaNet as its current communication standard, but will go to AS2 when the upgrades are completed.

1. Can JBoss messaging send messages using HTTPS to different messaging platforms? If so, can you direct me to an example of this? Or how to use the HttpConnectionFactory invoker?

2. Can JBoss messaging communicate with external systems that are not JBoss queues, such as, Biztalk? Does it matter what system the receiver is on at all?

3. I am finding little besides the Web Seminar and the user doc as examples to getting this set up. All examples communicate using JNDI to localhost. Is there a way to use the http example to pass a message to an external messaging system?

Thanks for your time, I look forward to utilizing this system.
Damon

[burrsutter]

Hello Damon,

I'll try to address some of your points but OTHERS may wish to also chime in on this thread. Your use case is one that I have encountered before. Many people wish to integrate with (augment) or remove another BPM/Messaging/ESB system (e.g. BizTalk, Tibco, WebMethods, etc) with open source software.

1. JBoss Messaging and HTTPS? Not out of the box. However you might use the ESB to move that message from the JMS platform to a HTTP endpoint. However, this would require some custom code.

2. JBoss Messaging and Biztalk? Not out of the box. You might be able to create a bridge to BizTalk that pulls messages out of JMS and sends them to BizTalk via SOAP or another protocol/transport.

3. Documentation? Keep in mind this the ESB forum, not the Messaging forum and you may better answers there.

JMS/Messaging is simply a "transport" that can be used by the ESB for moving messages to/from external services/systems.

Burr

[brown078]

Thanks for your reply, it does clarify that this is a possibility still. The issues that we are runing into is even though biztalk touts itself as an out-of-the box messaging solution ... its not. We have a slew of consultants that do custom DLLs to integrate with our systems.

This is fine if we had an understanding of what it is they do or even simple visibilty into the trasport layer would be nice.

So with understanding of the customization, is this configuration possible to use and would i be using it right....:
1. ESB to pass messages via HTTPS
2. Use jBoss messaging to prioritize our sends and recieves RosettaNet/Jboss messages.
3. Develop customized management systems to show these transactions taking place.


Im seeing ESB as my transport layer and messaging as my queues. Is that correct?

Thanks

[tfennelly]

Hi Damon.

So with understanding of the customization, is this configuration possible to use and would i be using it right....:
1. ESB to pass messages via HTTPS
2. Use jBoss messaging to prioritize our sends and recieves RosettaNet/Jboss messages.
3. Develop customized management systems to show these transactions taking place.


Im seeing ESB as my transport layer and messaging as my queues. Is that correct?

I'm not sure I could answer these questions directly because I'd need to make them a bit more pointed/specific. Then we can talk about how JBossESB can help as part of your overall solution.

Re "Im seeing ESB as my transport layer and messaging as my queues. Is that correct?". In general re JBoss ESB, prob best think of it as an "SOA Integration Layer" and not just a "Transport Layer". The ESB will obviously have "transport" related components but can also have lots more... BPM, Notification, Format-Transformation, Routing, Security, Transactionality etc components. Possibly a little off topic but...

Tom.

[daniel.brum]

Damon, would you give us a concrete example of the kind of use-case scenario you are talking about when you say you "use Biztalk"? I have no idea what Biztalk does or how it works, and how it's deployed, etc.

As for an ESB solution, it is not a transport layer, although of course it provides access to transport mechanisms like JMS or HTTP, Email, etc. It's a set of services built on top of those technologies, so that when you want to get data from source A to Consumer(s) B,C,D, etc. you do not have to reinvent that routing, transport, and transformation logic each time. It's a framework upon which all of these services are provided for you.

[brown078]

OK to clarify our usage of MS BizTalk.

BizTalk allows us to send and recieve RosettaNet messages from our vendors and customers. RosettaNet is a standard on sending messaging in the manufacturing industry. In RosettaNet, there are multiple different types of XML payloads, such as, the 7C6 which defines electronics repair standards. All RosettaNet messages have the same envelopes and the contents or payloads are different.

We have a customer on SAP and we are communicating back and forth with our systems using BizTalk as our transport and have different internal system that format these messages and ensure they get to their corresponding internal systems.

So:

[CUSTOMER] <--XML via HTTPS---->[BizTalk]--->[OUR COMPANY SYSTEMS]

BizTalk simply provides the transport and XML verification layer via HTTPS we program the XML messages to import into our systems.

BizTalk is blind when it comes to how it passes the message or even if it did pass the message. Meaning we have no visibility to its failures in any standard way. Additionally, its at end-of-life for the version we have. We are looking at implementing jBPM for multiple internal systems in development. Because of this, I would like to keep everything standardized. My thoughts are if jBoss is doing workflow managment so well, it would be a perfect fit. I guess Im at the confusing point or the "best" way to do it ....

Thanks for all of your responses.

[tfennelly]

Thanks for the clarifications Damon.

JBoss ESB can definetly do a lot for you hear. Here are a few points I can think of off hand:
1. Can provide the https endpoint through which your customers can get their XML messages onto the bus.
2. Can provide the appropriate components/endpoint for integrating your "Company Systems" into the bus in order to receive messages. Currently supports JMS, Database, Filesystem and SOAP endpoints.
3. Can perform data transformation on messages as they are routed to your internal systems and back to the customer's systems.
4. Can provide your customers with other integration endpoint options other than XML/HTTPS (JMS, Database, Filesystem and SOAP). Of course this also applies when you're integrating your internal company systems with each other - if that's something that interests you.

[brown078]

Thank you all for your responses. Im liking what I hear on the forum, and am starting to go through the trailblazer. I am getting a "probably new to this" error on the ant deploy.

__________________
Buildfile: build.xml

org.jboss.esb.samples.loanbroker.prepare:

org.jboss.esb.samples.loanbroker.compile:
[javac] Compiling 25 source files to C:\jboss-esb\docs\samples\trailblazer\bankloanbrokerdemo\build\classes\loanbroker
[javac] C:\jboss-esb\docs\samples\trailblazer\bankloanbrokerdemo\java\src\or
g\jboss\soa\esb\samples\loanbroker\web\LoanBrokerWS.java:33: package javax.jws.soap does not exist
_________________________

I have looked everywhere and have the JWDP from sun, where should I find the javax.jws package?

Thanks again

[daniel.brum]

the WebServices lib (what you are missing) is found in the JBOSS_HOME\client\jbossws-client.jar i believe. You need to be using the EJB3 installed version of JBoss AS, which has support for 181 pojo annotated Web Services.